SEMI: Semiconductor equipment is predicted to hit a new industry high of $100 billion in 2022

According to a report recently released by SEMI, Global sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment by original equipment manufacturers are forecast to surpass $100 billion next year, a new high, after jumping 34% to $95.3 billion in 2021 compared to $71.1 billion in 2020.

The report stated that the wafer fab equipment segment, which includes wafer processing, fab facilities, and mask/reticle equipment, is projected to surge 34% to a new industry record of $81.7 billion in 2021, followed by a 6% increase in 2022 to more than $86 billion.

Due to the strong demand for cutting-edge technologies in global industrial digitization, the foundry and logic sectors account for more than half of the total sales of fab equipment and will increase by 39% year-on-year, reaching 45.7 billion U.S. dollars by 2021. The growth momentum is expected to continue in 2022 with the foundry and logic equipment investments rising another 8%.

SEMI pointed out that strong demand for memory and storage is driving spending on NAND and DRAM manufacturing equipment. The DRAM equipment segment is expected to lead the expansion in 2021, surging 46% to surpass $14 billion. The NAND flash equipment market is projected to increase 13% in 2021 to $17.4 billion and 9% in 2022 to $18.9 billion, respectively.

The assembly and packaging equipment segment is forecast to grow 56% to $6 billion in 2021, followed by a 6% increase in 2022, driven by advanced packaging applications. The semiconductor test equipment market is expected to grow 26% in 2021 to $7.6 billion and expand another 6% in 2022 on demand for 5G and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Regionally, Korea, Taiwan region and mainland China are projected to remain the top three destinations for equipment spending in 2021, with Korea at the top on the strength of a robust memory recovery and strong investments in leading-edge logic and foundry. Equipment spending for all regions tracked are expected to grow in 2021.

The following results reflect market size by segment and application in billions of U.S. dollars: